


Where the Cold Wind Blows

by Guu



Series: Paper Windows [6]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Paper Windows 'verse, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-19
Updated: 2014-05-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 19:25:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1659692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guu/pseuds/Guu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s windy outside, and Castiel stands on the ledge of the top floor of a public building.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where the Cold Wind Blows

It’s windy outside, and Castiel stands on the ledge of the top floor of a public building. He doesn’t stand so close to the edge that he could risk falling, but close enough that he can feel the wind slapping his face, running through his body, making his open sweater float behind him like a cape. If he closes his eyes and concentrates on the rough caress on his cheeks, his nest of hair dancing wildly over his face and the idle sounds of the bubbling city below, he can almost remember how it felt like to fly. How gravity had no influence over him and he was weightless, formless, how his body curved time and space to be where he needed to be the most.

He takes a deep breath and spreads his arms. It’s cold here, and he sheds his sweater, lets his skin go slightly numb. He’s flying.

Of course Dean doesn’t know about this. Dean isn’t aware of Cas’ little trips around the city, how he knows all the high buildings that have public terraces one can visit, how he’s been prohibited from entering a building or two after someone caught standing him too close to the edge of a balcony, outside the rails. Dean can’t know. It would break his heart, and Castiel has done enough of that to try again.

Still, he needs this. He needs the rush, he needs the knowledge that this life is a _choice_. And he needs to feel weightless, sometimes. To remember that other thing that he used to be, the mighty, terrible, frightening being that used to inhabit this skin. He doesn’t wish to forget who he has been, but this human existence is so fragile and so temporary, so small. He hasn’t been able to fly in years and years, but if he closes his eyes, if he pretends he can, he can find some little respite, can forgive this body for being nothing but dust and old bones.

\---

Sometimes Cas gets into these cranky spells. That’s what Dean calls them, anyway. Not to Cas’ face, no. Cas overheard Dean talking about it on the phone with one of his coworkers, and he found it somewhat bemusing, because he had never thought of himself as cranky, a terribly human feat. He’s thought of himself on these periods as intolerable, irrational maybe, although not so much. Overwhelmed, perhaps. Wary. He’s lived eons on Earth and observed humanity at its finest and darkest, but being a part of it escapes him in so many ways. What are six years in an immortal creature’s way? That’s how long he’s been doing this dance for. Six years, four or which he’s lived with Dean.

So yeah, Cas can get cranky. Cas can get annoyed at the alarming way in which his eyes don’t focus as they used to, and how tedious morning routines are, at the fact that he needs to shower and brush his teeth, at having to cook, at having to piss, at needing to fuck. He’s only human now, after all. He can fume and scowl at the blisters on the ball of his feet, despite Dean’s ministrations and the promise that it will heal promptly.

Cas shuts his mouth and refuses to talk for the best part of some weeks, and Dean lets him. Dean just comes home, kisses his cheek, if Cas will allow it, treads lightly around him like one would with a scared animal, and it makes Castiel angrier, nastier, but he doesn’t talk. He lets Dean feed him, because he needs it, lets Dean curl around him at night, while Cas glares with whatever righteous indignation he still has at the various stains on the ceiling, at the one that looks like a big sumatra rat.

Cas is never sure what he’s so angry at, but these bouts of pure rage come and go, leave him feeling exhausted, restless. He supposes he regrets being less, now. Being this puny mortal sack of dirt who can’t even fly. Who wouldn’t know how to live without being propped up.

He sighs.

He stands on the balcony of their own apartment, letting the morning air kiss his eyes. It’s still cold, still humid, still damp. It’s always damp, but there will be no rain, so he breathes in the morning air, fills his lungs to the brim once, twice. Somewhere in the city the sun is rising from its daily nap, but from this little corner of a grey, stale neighborhood, all he can see is a clear purple sky.

He’s not naked, but he wishes he were; he prefers the soft chill of the autumn to the gentle warmth of the spring.

In the company of three pots of plants and a litany of forgotten cigarette butts, he stands, still, for hours, and waits for Dean to come home.

Cas hasn’t talked to Dean in three days.

When Dean returns from his nightly rounds, twenty minutes later than usual, he brings home a bouquet of peonies. He peels off his working clothes, as Cas stands motionless on the balcony. When Dean gets into the bathroom, Cas comes inside, closes the door behind him. He takes the peonies and arranges them in a plastic jar that Dean hates. Cas likes flowers, in general, but Cas likes the flowers that Dean gets him the most.

Dean doesn’t say a word when he returns to the bedroom. He frowns at their pristine bed, evidence that Cas hasn’t slept, but his eyes soften when they land on the flower jar on the nightstand to the left. He approaches Cas, tentative, and Castiel suddenly can’t bear to have Dean act so skittish around him, so he says:

“Hello, Dean.”

There is this thing, with Dean’s face. When he smiles, it can brighten up an entire room.

“Good morning, Cas.”

Dean looks tired, as per usual, but he still takes the time to kiss Cas’ cheek, despite most likely wanting to sleep. He flops on the bed, then, Castiel trailing after him, but getting as far as the bed’s feet, where he sits, biting his cheek.

He needs to make some things clear before he allows Dean to sleep. Frowning to himself, he tries to rethink his earlier statements. He knows he could live by himself, if he wanted. He knows, in terms of time, that Dean is a tiny blip in his existence. He has lived eons without him, and he could continue to do so. Much like his humanity, Dean has been (has always been) his _choice_.

But he frowns, still, knowing that Dean’s attention is on him. How to convey this?

“Dean,” he starts, fixing his stare on the soft callouses of his hands, “you do know, right?”

Dean’s eyebrows fly high on his brow.

“Know what,” Dean says, amused.

“You know,” Cas continues, vague, indicating the air around them. He feels awkward having to be verbal about what he feels, the words tasting weird in his mouth, but Dean isn’t exactly Neruda, so he tries again. “That I… that I love you, and, well… despite my. Moods.”

 There is a quick silence, and Dean chuckles from the bottom of his heart.

 “Aren’t you a romantic,” he says, but still reaches for Cas, pulls him into the bed until he’s sprawled all over Dean’s warm body. Castiel is pliant under his touch, but still tries to take offense at Dean’s teasing of his fatal wooing techniques.

 “I could be a romantic,” Cas protests, “I could have serenaded you.”

 Dean looks a bit skeptical, but still gives him a cocky grin, says, “Oh yeah? Then woo me, maestro.”

 Cas goes into a terrible out of pitch rendition of an old Whitesnake song, and Dean laughs with his body, wholeheartedly, a hand over his belly, until he pleads and relents and accepts Cas’ offering as is, admits Cas is a perfect romantic, calls him Casanova, the next Coverdale, the only dorky little dude he’ll ever want to kiss, and lets Cas fold him as he likes best, until they’re pressed together under their fancy duvet, between their well worn sheets.

 Dean falls asleep soon as Cas watches him, every so often glancing at their filthy ceiling where another stain is taking over a corner, in the shape of a moth, or a butterfly, or a bee.

 He counts the hours until he needs to get up to go to work, and for once doesn’t think about falling.

  

**Author's Note:**

> As usual, thanks to Dusty and Ella for being my partners in crime and offering me concrit and inspiring me to keep on writing.


End file.
